What to know about the controversial practice of orgasmic meditation
By The Guardian, April 4, 2026In 2009, the New York Times ran a story about Nicole Daedone and her wellness company, OneTaste, which promoted women’s empowerment through a practice known as “orgasmic meditation” (OM).
“I don’t think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality,” Daedone said at the time.
The company was tremendously successful. At first, it operated out of a San Francisco warehouse where many practitioners lived communally, practising OM day and night.
Later, it opened locations in cities around the US, including San Francisco, Austin, and New York City. Gwyneth Paltrow promoted it on her podcast, and actors like David Schwimmer, Orlando Bloom, and Brian Cox reported attending presentations. In 2017, Daedone sold OneTaste for Ksh1.5 billion.
Fast forward to this March. Daedone was sentenced to a federal prison after a judge ruled she had used psychological, emotional, and financial coercion to force vulnerable women into sex acts with company clients and investors.
The ruling came after a series of damning investigations into OneTaste’s top executives. In 2022, Netflix released the documentary Orgasm Inc, which explored the controversies surrounding the company. Former clients and teachers said they felt pressured to participate in explicit “demonstrations” and to take on large amounts of debt to pay for courses and retreats, some of which cost as much as Ksh7.7 million.
“One rule of thumb when exploring sex-positive spaces might be to ask: ‘Is someone getting rich from this?’” says Dr. Anouchka Grose, a writer and psychoanalyst in London. “If the answer is yes, there’s a distinct possibility that money is more important to the organiser than your well-being.”
So what exactly is OM, the practice behind this company and controversy?
What is orgasmic meditation?
Orgasmic meditation was developed by Daedone in the early 2000s.
In her 2011 TEDx Talk, Daedone said her first experience of something resembling OM was at a party, when a stranger offered to introduce her to the practice.
“Somehow, I found myself lying there, legs butterflied open,” she recalled. The stranger shone a light between her legs and told her what he saw, describing the color and shape of her labia. “I couldn’t hear anything after that because the tears just started flooding,” she said. “I had never been looked at or felt that kind of compassion before.”
After he touched her clitoris for a while, she says, “the traffic jam that was in my mind broke open. It was like I was on the open road and there was no thought in sight, and there was only pure feeling.”
Over the next few years, Daedone said she “cobbled together” a practice that could be repeatable and help others get to that state.
“The amazing thing isn’t just that you can hit that place – it’s that you can hit it with another human being,” she said in her talk.
OM is not the first practice to combine spirituality, mindfulness, and sexuality. Tantra and sexual mindfulness, for example, are traditions “bound in with older ethical systems, ie Buddhism and Vedic knowledge”, says Grose.
But even these more established practices can be a minefield if not handled properly, she says. “Many modern, Western schools of tantra are similar to OM in that they try to make money out of confused, repressed subjects,” Grose adds.
Tantra, kink and conscious-relating workshops can be great for learning about sexuality, Grose says. But, she adds: “They need to be prefaced with a huge amount of training around consent so participants know they can always say no to anything they don’t want to do.”